Frederick Neuhouser

Michael Forster’s latest book is a comprehensive and illuminating treatment of the basic tasks and strategies of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. As the title indicates, Forster is more concerned to elucidate the aims and structure of the Phenomenology as a whole than to reconstruct the claims of specific sections or to provide a chapter-by-chapter commentary. Forster is correct that a coherent and sympathetic account of the Phenomenology’s “official project” is badly needed, and he succeeds admirably in the task he has set for himself. In explicating Hegel’s project Forster draws on an impressive knowledge of Hegel’s early, lesser-known writings, as well as those parts of the history of philosophy that matter most to the Phenomenology. These virtues alone suffice to make the book an indispensable resource for Hegel scholars, as well as for those who are new to his philosophy.

Can a human society suffer from illness like a living thing? And if so, how does such a malaise manifest itself? In this thought-provoking book, Fred Neuhouser explains and defends the idea of social pathology, demonstrating what it means to describe societies as 'ill', or 'sick', and why we are so often drawn to conceiving of social problems as ailments or maladies. He shows how Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim – four key philosophers who are seldom taken to constitute a 'tradition' – deploy the idea of social pathology in comparable ways, and then explores the connections between societal illnesses and the phenomena those thinkers made famous: alienation, anomie, ideology, and social dysfunction. His book is a rich and compelling illumination of both the idea of social disease and the importance it has had, and continues to have, for philosophical views of society.

ABSTRACT This article reconstructs Nietzsche's conception of spiritual illness, especially as exhibited in various forms of the bad conscience, and asks what positive, ennobling potential Nietzsche finds in it. The relevant concept of spirit is arrived at by reconstructing Nietzsche's conception of life and then considering what reflexive life—life turned back against itself—would look like. It distinguishes four independent features of spiritual illness: the measureless drive to make oneself suffer, self-opacity, life denial, and a self-undermining dynamic in which life exhausts the sources of its own vitality. The article ends by considering various suggestions as to how these features of spiritual illness might also be preconditions of great spiritual health, including the preconditions for erecting new “ideals.”

This chapter examines the philosophical underpinnings of Durkheim’s account of anomie as social pathology. It examines and evaluates Durkheim’s conception of social pathology and his claim that social problems must be understood as analogous to illnesses. Further, it explores the vision of social ontology—of the kind of being that human societies have—underlying Durkheim’s position, which involves articulating the ways in which human societies are both different from and similar to biological organisms. Because Durkheim conceives of the task of social theory as similar to that of medicine, his account of anomie can be regarded as compatible in important ways with the tradition of Frankfurt-style critical theory. Both approaches to social reality attribute to social theory three inter-related tasks: theoretical understanding, normative evaluation, and guidance for practical action directed at changing the pathologies it diagnoses.

ABSTRACT Hegel calls social life “the living good,” but what this means is unclear. The idea expresses an ontological claim about the kind of being that human societies possess, but it is also normatively significant, clarifying why the category of social pathology is an appropriate tool of social critique. Social life consists in processes of life infused with ethical content. Societies are normatively and functionally constituted living beings that realize the good similarly to how organisms achieve their vital ends: via specialized, coordinated functions. In distinction to living organisms, the living good realizes itself through the consciousness and will of individual social members.

This paper reconstructs Nietzsche’s conception of spiritual illness, especially as exhibited in various forms of the bad conscience, and asks what positive, ennobling potential Nietzsche finds in it. The relevant concept of spirit is arrived at by reconstructing Nietzsche’s conception of life and then considering what reflexive life – life turned back against itself – would look like. It distinguishes four independent features of spiritual illness: the measureless drive to make oneself suffer, self-opacity (or mendaciousness), life-denial, and a self-undermining dynamic in which life exhausts the sources of its own vitality. The paper ends by considering various suggestions as to how these features of spiritual illness might also be preconditions of great spiritual health, including the preconditions for erecting new “ideals.”

The aim of the dissertation is to examine Fichte's attempt at demonstrating the unity of theoretical and practical reason. Chapter 1 discusses the young Fichte's dissatisfaction with Kant's two separate accounts of reason in the First and Second Critiques. It also analyzes the relationship between the issue of the unity of reason and what Fichte takes to be another crucial problem in Kant's moral philosophy, the lack of a positive proof that pure reason is practical. ;Chapter 2 traces Fichte's development from his early criticisms of Kant through the Wissenschaftslehre of 1797-9 and examines the various strategies he considers in his attempt to demonstrate the unity of reason. The main concern here is to clarify the sense in which Fichte ultimately comes to regard theoretical and practical subjectivity as unitary. It is argued that his main strategy is to show that a single structure underlies consciousness in both its theoretical and practical forms, a structure which he intends to capture with his distinctive notion of the subject's "self-positing" activity. ;Chapter 3 examines Fichte's theory of the self-positing subject as it relates to the phenomenon of theoretical self-consciousness. It focuses on three reasons behind Fichte's central claim that subjectivity cannot be grasped by the same concepts employed to understand objects: The subject must be understood as an activity rather than as a thing. The subject's existence is distinct from that of an object, for in the former case self-awareness is essential to the subject's being. This implies that the subject, in a sense, constitutes itself through its own conscious activity. The self-referring activity which constitutes the subject must have a structure that is distinct from the dual, subject-object structure of representation. ;Chapter 4 investigates Fichte's use of the doctrine of the self-positing subject to construct a theory of practical self-determination which explains the autonomous subject's relation to itself without recourse to a "two-worlds" view in which the subject of experience is determined by a rational but unknowable noumenal self. ;The conclusion assesses the extent to which Fichte's theory succeeds in showing that an identical structure informs both theoretical and practical subjectivity

This paper rebuts four objections to my attempt, in Foundations of Hegel's Social Theory, to reconstruct Hegel's social philosophy in abstraction from his metaphysics and theodicy: 1) that social philosophy requires the Logic as its ground; 2) that only an independent metaphysics can justify the norms employed by social philosophy; 3) that empirical considerations can play no role in Hegel's arguments; and 4) that, robbed of his "ontology of the self," Hegel cannot respond to romantic critics. In response to a fifth objection, I acknowledge that my book fails to consider the extent to which art, religion, and philosophy are conditions of practical freedom.

Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among Mankind, published in 1755, is a vastly influential study of the foundations of human society, including the economic inequalities it tends to create. To date, however, there has been little philosophical analysis of the Discourse in the literature. In this book, Frederick Neuhouser offers a rich and incisive philosophical examination of the work. He clarifies Rousseau's arguments as to why social inequalities are so prevalent in human society and why they pose fundamental dangers to human well-being, including unhappiness, loss of freedom, immorality, conflict, and alienation. He also reconstructs Rousseau's four criteria for assessing when inequalities are or are not legitimate, and why. His reconstruction and evaluation of Rousseau's arguments are accessible to both scholars and students, and will be of interest to a broad range of readers including philosophers, political theorists, cultural historians, sociologists, and economists.

The principal aim of Andrew Levine’s most recent book is to defend the ideal of communism. Its strategy is to demonstrate the coherence and desirability of that ideal by invoking Rousseau’s concept of the general will. More specifically, the general will is supposed to provide a model for the kind of cooperation that will take place among members of a communistic society. Since the notion of a general will is itself highly obscure, this book can also be read as an attempt to clarify and flesh out the central concept of Rousseau’s political thought by interpreting it in light of some of Marx’s claims about the nature of communism. Yet the book is both less unified and wider in scope than this description implies. As Levine himself suggests at one point, the book is more accurately described as a collection of essays on a variety of topics, all of which deal in some way with the relation between the normative standards implicit in Marx’s ideal of communism and those that guide liberal political thought. Although this book has many interesting things to say about Rousseau, it is valuable more for its discussion of issues within Marxist political theory than for the light it sheds on Rousseau’s thought itself. While the treatment of Marx’s ideas is both subtle and sympathetic throughout, there are crucial aspects of Rousseau’s project, especially those that do not fit in easily with Marx’s concerns, that are ignored or misunderstood. One example of this is Levine’s misinterpretation of amour-propre—it is said to be the equivalent of Hobbes’s rational egoism —and his consequent failure to appreciate how the desire for recognition from one’s fellow beings figures centrally in Rousseau’s understanding of the basic task faced by political theory. thought.) These interpretive shortcomings diminish in importance, however, if we think of the book as primarily an attempt to clarify and reconstruct Marx’s views on the nature of communism. Viewed from this perspective, the book represents an important part of the author’s ongoing project, begun in several previous books, of rethinking and defending the central ideas of Marxist social thought.

This book is the first comprehensive study of Rousseau's rich and complex theory of the type of self-love (amour proper) that, for him, marks the central difference between humans and the beasts. Amour proper is the passion that drives human individuals to seek the esteem, approval, admiration, or love--the recognition--of their fellow beings. Neuhouser reconstructs Rousseau's understanding of what the drive for recognition is, why it is so problematic, and how its presence opens up far-reaching developmental possibilities for creatures that possess it. One of Rousseau's central theses is that amour proper in its corrupted, manifestations--pride or vanity--is the principal source of an array of evils so widespread that they can easily appear to be necessary features of the human condition: enslavement, conflict, vice, misery, and self-estrangement. Yet Rousseau also argues that solving these problems depends not on suppressing or overcoming the drive for recognition but on cultivating it so that it contributes positively to the achievement of freedom, peace, virtue, happiness, and unalienated selfhood. Indeed, Rousseau goes so far as to claim that, despite its many dangers, the need for recognition is a condition of nearly everything that makes human life valuable and that elevates it above mere animal existence: rationality, morality, freedom--subjectivity itself--would be impossible for humans if it were not for amour proper and the relations to others it impels us to establish